Tesla Under Fire for Unsafe Working Conditions

Tesla, one of the world's leading makers of electric automobiles, has come under fire for its lax safety protocols to protect workers from injury.

According to a new report by the worker safety advocacy group Worksafe, Tesla's rate of worker injury at its Fremont, California factory was 31% higher than the average rate for car makers in the United States. 

To make these conclusions, researchers from Worksafe pulled data from the U.S. Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) website. After scouring through the data, researchers found that Tesla had an injury incidence rate of 8.8 per 100 workers. In comparison, the national average for automotive workers is about 6.7 per 100. While data rates have not been released for 2016 yet, researchers believe that Tesla improved its working conditions at least some from 2015 to 2016. With that said, these numbers only reflect recorded injuries. If an injury went unnoticed and/or unrecorded, it didn't affect the company's rate of injury.

In an interview with CBS news, several Tesla workers discussed the company's working conditions, citing fatigue and overexertion as being the biggest challenges in regards to workers safety. As explained by one worker, Tesla has them "trying to run as hard" as possible to accomplish the most work every day.

While maintaining an emphasis on productivity is certainly a helpful tool in business, there's a fine line that employers must draw between making products in an efficient manner and jeopardizing worker safety. Whether Tesla crossed this line is unclear, though its rate of worker injury for 2015 has certainly raised some eyebrows about its practices.

In a response to these findings, Tesla released a statement in which it confirmed that it has experienced "some challenges" and that it's learning to become a better company.

"We may have had some challenges in the past as we were learning how to become a car company, but what matters is the future and with the changes we’ve made, we now have the lowest injury rate in the industry by far,” responded Tesla in a statement. “Our goal is to have as close to zero injuries as humanly possible and to become the safest factory in the auto industry."

Of course, news of Tesla's less-than-stellar worker safety record comes just as CEO Elon Musk has vowed to increase production from 80,000 automobiles in 2016 to more than 100,000 this year. And for 2018, Must plans to produce a whopping 500,000 automobiles.